Two Boone-based health nonprofits are merging.
The Hunger and Health Coalition and the Community Care Clinic aren’t exactly strangers. They’ve shared a workspace in the same building off Bamboo Road for almost 20 years.
They also share similar missions. Hunger and Health provides medicine and healthy food to vulnerable populations across the region. The clinic provides free healthcare to low-income, uninsured patients.
Now, Hunger and Health is integrating the clinic into its organization.
Kayla Lasure, director of marketing and communications for the coalition, says a person who comes into the clinic with a diagnosis of diabetes, for example, will now also be able to speak to a coalition nutritionist about dietary changes.
“And then also, in the same building, they're able to get all of the food that they might need in order to help them make that change," she says. "So we will just have now a team of people that will be able to take care of that person from start to finish, regardless of whatever their need is.”
Lasure says the demand for the services the combined nonprofits can provide has grown in the wake of Helene.